After an absence of sixteen years, Susan Pettiford has come home to North Carolina, this time for good. Thanks to an inheritance, she can start her own interior design business. But it’s not quite the life Susan hoped for. Single at thirty-four, she now faces a challenge that forces her to accept one of her dreams will never come true. Battling sadness, Susan decides to engage in a fling…

Architect Lucas Hamilton couldn’t be more surprised by Susan’s dinner invitation—after all, she’s the same woman who clearly rebuffed his advances at a recent party. Still, his curiosity overcomes his doubts. The result is a night of seduction neither can forget yet neither intends to repeat. While Susan focuses on her work and a new friendship with her troubled neighbor Cassie, Lucas focuses on his goal to become more wealthier than the biological father he resents for being absent from his life. Then, when Lucas’s father resurfaces, he finds himself turning to Susan for counsel. As the complexities of family, work, and their undeniable attraction lead their paths to cross repeatedly, their feelings for each other strengthen. But the secret Susan is hiding from Lucas may destroy any future they share…

Praise for Gwynne Forster

“Gwynne creates a fictional world of ideas and passions…truly modern women and men struggling with a torrent of issues…delivered in accomplished prose that challenges us to think, feel, and imagine.” —Robert Fleming, author of The Wisdom of the Elders

“Touching, thought-provoking.” —Kimberla Lawson Roby, New York Times bestselling author on If You Walked in My Shoes

“A page-turner, and it’s one that deserves to be read in a few sittings.” —QBR, The Black Book Review on Blues From Down Deep

“An unforgettable read.”—Donna Hill, author of If I Could on When Twilight Comes

GWYNNE FORSTER is an award-winning, national bestselling author. She is also a demographer and former senior United Nations Officer, in which capacities she has traveled the world. She lives in New York City with her husband.